Gothic 3 - CP 1.74 Announced

The release of a v1.74 Community Patch for Gothic 3 slipped past us, so thanks to Kostaz for writing. Details in this thread at World of Gothic:

- ATI/AMD driver bug: Workaround for missing shadows on Radeon 4000/5000 series graphics cards.
+ Improved specular light.
- Shadow problem at ambience mushrooms in Nordmar on 7xxx nVidia graphics cards fixed.
- Problem in czech installer version fixed.
- Quest "Debt and debility" with Ilja fixed.
+ Screen noise (optional). (Picture - click here)
+ Grass reacts to the hero's steps.
+ Visual feedback when the hero ist poisoned or has low life energy (optional).(Video - click here)
- Hunter merchants will pay twice the price for dark snapper leather again.
- Some minor bug fixes and improvements.
+ Improved Bloom/HDR. (pictures Bloom+HDR (click), HDR Blueshift (click), Sun (click))
+ Improved water. (Picture - click here)
[…]
Mirrors

- Download WoG (description)

- CD Projekt

- AtomicGamer

More information.

As much as I admire the mod communities out there for their great works, Gothic 3 was still quite painful to play through with CP 1.7x. There were just too many deep flaws to the gameplay and not all the bugs could be squished.
The game *always* however gave me tingles and giddy fits with the atmosphere it created, whenever I discovered a town or found a hill to stand and gawp from, and the CP only made it better.
I won't be loading up Gothic 3 again, and I think it's time for others to move on. I wish these same people would have a look at Risen … ;-)

I don't see any "deep flaws" in Gothic 3. And what bugs? There is virtually none. The game can get shallow from time to time, because there is so much of it. But I think it's now quite close to what Piranha Bytes wanted it to be.

Risen on other hand is too direct copy of Gothic2. Or would I say "remake". There is virtually nothing new there. At least G3 brought something new…

So what would do with Risen? Add more lizard men?

No, delete the original ending and create a new one!!

Gothic 3 was a great game even with all the extremely annoying
bugs it had and the proof is that there are still people trying to make it better

Originally Posted by Corwin
No, delete the original ending and create a new one!!

Good idea! How about a room full of 100 lizard men? There just weren't enough!

Originally Posted by Ergonpandilus
At least G3 brought something new…

Yep, it brought a shitload of bugs, terrible performance on most hardware configurations, and combat that was absolutely horrendous.

Not trying to bash it, I still enjoyed it for the most part, but I can't ignore the facts.

Originally Posted by Corwin
No, delete the original ending and create a new one!!

Yeah, Risen's ending was beyond terrible. Although the game itself is still one of the better crpgs I've played recently.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Yep, it brought a shitload of bugs, terrible performance on most hardware configurations, and combat that was absolutely horrendous.

Not trying to bash it, I still enjoyed it for the most part, but I can't ignore the facts.

At the release yes, but not with CP 1.7X as mazling stated!

Yeah, Risen's ending was beyond terrible. Although the game itself is still one of the better crpgs I've played recently.

With Risen, I hadn't any pleasant surprised, I've had seen it all already in Gothic 2. Not a single new skills, if I recall correctly. Nice addition to cRPGs, but not great.

Risen > Gothic 3

Even with my new graphics card I still get some stuttering, but other than that, I find the game a lot of fun to play. If you can deal with the almost non-existance of a narrative, its a great sandbox to explore. Teh CP team really deserves a lot of praise for their enormous effort.

The more lizard men the merrier?

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Even with my new graphics card I still get some stuttering, but other than that, I find the game a lot of fun to play. If you can deal with the almost non-existance of a narrative, its a great sandbox to explore. Teh CP team really deserves a lot of praise for their enormous effort.

I don't think that at this point, it's a video card problem. I think it's more the streaming engine that's not optimized and causes stutter. You'll otherwise a stable 60+ frames per second, I'm sure. But run into a new zone and your fluid framerate will stutter for a second. I fear that better hardware will never be able to fix this problem.

I have a new gpu and it has no problem running G3 on full settings .

G3 is crap but i may give this new patch a go after finishing VtM Redemption .

Well, I can run G3 smoothly with 4GB RAM, Radeon 4850 and Amd Phenon X4. Though yes, there are those stutterings. Those stuttering comes from loading the huge land masses. You can tune the cache settings, if you like, but only cure for that is fast harddrive and RAM. The game still looks better than most new games and the gameworld is so HUGE and detailed, that I can accept the stuttering. And it really isn't that bad in my system…


And if the scenery is beautiful like this, you can spare two seconds enjoying the view.

Yes, its definitely the streaming that causes the stuttering problems (once everything is loaded, I get very nice framerates now). My HD isn't as fast as it should be, I guess thats the main problem.
It dosen't turn me off the game though. I really like G3 in its CP incarnation.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Yes, its definitely the streaming that causes the stuttering problems (once everything is loaded, I get very nice framerates now). My HD isn't as fast as it should be, I guess thats the main problem.
It dosen't turn me off the game though. I really like G3 in its CP incarnation.

You are the last drop in the bucket. Iam gonna replay G3 incarnation again soon.

Ergonpandilus, you're using Win7, right? So, G3 works without problems with Win7, or did you have to "wrangle" with it to get it running?

I haven't touched G3 for ages. Last I tried it with my previous rig, with some earlier version of the CP (maybe 1.6x), it was still stuttering at places, so I decided to uninstall it (again). Now that I have a new rig, I might give G3 a go (again). I've installed G3 at least 4 times and every time I've quit after some 10 hours in. It's the double whammy of poor(ish) performance and really bad combat system that does it for me (for the record, I like G1 and G2 combat). IIRC, something was tweaked about the combat system in some version of the CP, did that make it any more enjoyable (not just right-clicking everything to death or having the über-boars/wolves stun lock you to death)?

I thought I said that I really enjoyed Gothic 3, warts and all. ;-)
I'd rather take on *all the lizardmen* than a single wild boar in Gothic 3! This and the fact that enemies could attack THROUGH each other - one directly behind the other - alongside orc shamans that could one-shot you at 9km and … holy cow, more than one time it spawned at least 100 orcs or so during a rebellion. Also: stun lock? Extreme lag when casting any spell? I've enjoyed playing every time, however. It has much more soul than Oblivion, and Risen. One of the all-time great soundtracks didn't hurt the game either.
Risen is unambitious with a terrible ending and has it's own performance problems (the mage keep chugs along even with a 5870) but it did not make me want to smash my monitor every half hour or so. The scenery was nice and the melee combat was varied and challenging.
I like to gawp and feel immersed and free, but what's the point of any beautiful vista when you know it will only be the setting for your own misery and suffering when it comes to playing there?
Gothic 3 was beautiful tragedy, and Risen is a pretty decent game. PB should look at both when it comes to their next sandbox rpg.

Originally Posted by Lurking Grue
IIRC, something was tweaked about the combat system in some version of the CP, did that make it any more enjoyable (not just right-clicking everything to death or having the über-boars/wolves stun lock you to death)?

I never played the original version, but I find the combat with CP (alternative balancing and alternative AI activated) bearable to fun. The changes are detailed in the handbook for the CP, but the main things I recall is that they changed how block works and changed NPC/creature AI. I don't know if right click spamming is still a viable approach (neeer tried that), but I fare quite well using combinations of block and the different attacks, and against NPC's the fights are actually quite fun this way. Creatures are less fun and wolves and boars are still (too) dangerous, but stun lock is something I have only experienced rarely, if at all. My main beef is that fighting agains more than 2 adversaries is really really hard. Realistic maybe, but against hordes of 10 Rhinos….